If I were given unlimited power, money, and the unknowing
assistance of multitudes of pawns, players, shills, toadies, lap dogs,
etc; to take down a nation, how would I do it?

Common sense says, first I would want to control that
nation's monetary system with the unlimited ability to tax the population
(incurring massive debt) into servitude. I might name my monetary system
with an official-sounding title that would fool the multitudes into thinking
I was an official governmental agency - and not a private banking cartel.

I would institute various programs of entitlement to
entrap and make the citizenry dependent on various handouts - thus killing
their incentive to work, but most of all to control dissent. One doesn't
bite the hand that feeds them.

I would give robber barons, and various corporate entities,
through lobbyists and campaign contributions to key legislators the power
to write their own meal tickets, excusing them from various taxes, regulation,
liabilities and accountability. I would set up off -shore accounts and
various trusts to protect the wealth of the favored elite. Only the working
cogs will pay strangulating taxes.

I would kill unions. Unions are not cost-effective for
companies whose sole purpose for existence is 'profits'. Unions are a hindrance
with their silliness of demanding livable wages, safe working conditions,
medical benefits, pensions, vacations, etc. I would initiate a PR campaign
to discredit and label those who had any thoughts of organizing. I would
threaten to close down local industries and ship them overseas if workers
balked at lower wages, or resented being mere cogs in the machine. In the
event of a strike, I would call in scab workers and security guards to
handle unruly vocal workers. Maybe I'd kill the leaders - just as a lesson.

Next, for quicker servitude, I would shut down the mills,
the various plants, machine shops, manufacturing, auto companies (livable
wage jobs), and send them to foreign lands, where labor costs (no benefits
- no safety standards) are mere pennies. I would grant tax incentives,
subsidies and create consulting firms to assist companies in making a smooth
transition to less restrictive lands.

I would direct Congress to vote legislation (various
visas) to import tens and more tens of thousands of foreign workers who
would be paid one-half to one third of American wages (no benefits, no
job security) to work at resorts, hotels, restaurants, in the medical field,
engineering, teaching and in Information Technology. I would propagandize
the gullible public, telling them that Americans 'won't do' those jobs
- or that there are not enough trained Americans to fill the positions.
Congress will be instructed to reinforce this lie in various scripted messages
(media - campaign trail - speeches in Congress).

Slowly and insidiously, I would remove most of the major
decision-making to the Executive Branch under the guise of national security.
Presidential Directives, and Executive Orders will replace the messiness
of having decisions held-up, or argued in Congress. Most importantly, the
public will remain mostly oblivious.

I would open the borders to allow millions of the dispossessed
(due to trade agreements) south of the border/others; to work on corporate
farms, as maids, laborers , construction workers, roofers, etc. I would
encourage illegal immigration; so as to keep these unsuspecting people,
in a constant state of apprehension - should they insist on a livable wage,
or complain, when unscrupulous contractors leave them unpaid, or injured
without compensation. I would organize massive marches (making them appear
as grassroots uprisings) pitting victims (American workers) against victims
(immigrants) - so as to keep the focus off of the various trade agreements
(constructing a global plantation). The more venom, rancor, hatred and
chaos, the better. The workers of the world, must never see these issues
as pertaining to class......but rather intolerance, racism, and bigotry.
Victims blaming victims, never the elite behind the curtain.

I would limit any real choices in voting, keeping the
field limited to a two-party (monied) system - where only the wealthy (poor
candidates ignored) and chosen need apply. Again, I would encourage animosity
between the reds and the blues, never revealing that they are playing (these
political parties) good cop - bad cop (depending on who is in power). Both
parties will be given their scripted talking points, which per usual, will
promise the world...and deliver nothing. They must not address the real
issues facing Americans and instead distract by sniping and snipping amongst
themselves. I would turn over the responsibility (to assure the outcome)
of voting to corporate entities with their easily-compromised voting machines
with no paper trails (such as even local ATM machines provide).

I would keep up the pretense of a 'representative democracy'
in Foggy Bottom with a lot of bickering, the blame game, and senseless
tedious hearings (always after the fact) of scandals, the lack of response
to disasters, sex , etc. This gives the 'appearance' of being busy and
on top of things.

I would set up a dysfunctional Department of Education,
that would dictate to the states (thus parents) various insane mandates,
regulations, and policies, for the sole purpose of dumbing down (through
tests, not teaching - whole language etc) the future generation. A dumb
population is an easily-controlled population. These various edicts, will
have the dual purpose of putting more and more costs on work-a-day property
owners who are unable to absorb the demands for higher and higher taxes
(to meet these demands). Thus, everyone will be made to work two or three
jobs to keep up with the newest tax bills, and so on. All of this
will result (as planned) in turning out functionally illiterate students,
fit for the local Wigget factory, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, garbage man, prison
guard or cannon fodder for war. None of these vocations demand calculus,
or being educated in literature, or world affairs.

The teachers of old will be replaced with 'change agents'
who will focus on group think, hive mentality behavior modification, and
social engineering - not teaching. Pre-school will become mandatory. The
younger the child, the easier it is to mold them into non-thinking dolts
conforming to authority. Parents (unread - easily intimidated) will be
convinced that little Johnnie or Jane is 'learning disabled, or hyper active',
and thus needs to be drugged into compliance. Mental illness centers will
become a major part of education - with soon nearly everyone being found
at risk.

"There's no earthly way of knowing

Which direction they are going!

There's no knowing where they're rowing,

Or which way the river's flowing!

Not a speck of light is showing,

So the danger must be growing,

For the rowers keep on rowing,

And they're certainly not showing any signs that

they are slowing........."

--Roald Dahl - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

DRUGS - I would saturate the land with drugs, pills,
LSD, marijuana, prescriptions, designer drugs etc; till the land was awash
with mind-numbing, brain-damaging chemicals making crime rampant, destroying
families/communities, and creating a private prison industry (the largest
in the world). The costs, to states and various communities will bankrupt
many - with peace officers, renamed law enforcers and gradually becoming
militarized. People will be conditioned to FEAR the police, not welcome
their presence.

I would allow the HMOs, Pharmaceuticals, and Insurance
companies to ravage and destroy what was once an affordable medical system.
They will write the legislation relieving them of any liabilities, and
making doctors mere technocrats in the 'machine' dictated to by some HMO/Insurance
drone in a far away cubicle as to what treatments their patients are ineligible
to receive. The focus will be on 'profits' with ever more exotic drugs
being offered in lieu of preventive medicine. Pollution, food additives,
chemicals, and Frankenstein crops will add to create even more ill health.
The Hippocratic Oath will become as antiquated as the Geneva Convention.
Being on constant vacation and with their own (taxpayer subsidized) health
insurance, granting them the best in prompt treatment (prescriptions),
the people's representatives will, as usual, protest feebly and do nothing.
Pharmaceutical companies will be granted legislative authority, to charge
top dollar for needed medicines, with Congress voting to prevent more affordable
medicines (made by the same companies) from being imported to the U.S.
from Canada and Japan. Profits over people is the corporate mantra of the
land.

I would make (except for legislators and the judicial
and executive branches with their obscene pensions) retirement an impossibility
for seniors. On fixed incomes, or minuscule pensions (if not already looted),
they will be unable to afford rising taxes, the cost of medicine, rent,
food, home heating, or medical treatment. Many will die in the land of
plenty of hypothermia, cancers, malnutrition, and once treatable medical
conditions that they can no longer afford to deal with (while their
well-to-do neighbors sing Amazing Grace at the village church). If they
don't die fast enough, they will be encouraged to embrace 'death with dignity'
- an Orwellian term for execution.

WAR - I would institute perpetual war, thus killing off
the best and brightest, bankrupting the country (borrowing billions for
destruction) while filling the coffers of corporate gangsters, the favored,
and the military industrial complex. I would privatize most of the military,
hiring mercenary troops at lucrative salaries for international and domestic
crises. Soldiers when returning home (due to privatized bureaucracy) will
be made to jump through hoops (for benefits) and forced to prove that missing
limbs, depleted uranium poisoning, and brain damage will hinder them from
living happily ever after.

"Don't you understand what I'm trying to say?

Can't you see the fear I'm feeling today?

If the button is pushed, there's no running away,

They'll be none to save with the world in a grave"

I would see gentrification by disaster and eminent domain,
tearing apart communities and making the dispossessed all wanderers in
the land of their birth. With shuttered downtowns, concrete box stores,
sprawl malls, fast food, plastic booth slop joints, consultants, and appointed
committees replacing local government, etc, I would destroy the known and
the familiar. Thus scattered, unity and the security of small town America
(ethnic neigborhoods) makes strangers struggling to exist...not to live.

"I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation,

handful of Senators don't pass legislation"

TRAVEL - The wealthy and chosen need have no fear. With
private jets - they will not be subjected to the humiliation put upon the
masses. Citizens held captive in rushing to business, a vacation, a funeral,
or medical emergency, etc will be scanned, groped (by rent-a-cops) made
to empty innocuous liquids, questioned, etc - not for security purposes
but for behavior modification...conditioning them to obedience and compliance.
No one will mention the incoming cargo containers not searched - millions
of containers from foreign lands sitting on docks and then embarking on
trucks to every corner of the unsuspecting nation. In a world
of announced terrorists, all become suspect (minus the favored few)...even
the babe and senior in his wheelchair. Examples will be made of those daring
to question or object. Travel will thus be discouraged.

MEDIA - Information, education, rational discourse, and
debate on all sides of an issue will be limited or prevented. Citizens
will be encourage to take sides - i.e., abortion, gun rights, immigration,
gay marriage, funding religion with taxpayer dollars, graphic sex education
for young elementary children, etc. Issues will be kept to the superfical
and emotional. Corporate control of the media (all media) is mandatory
(thus Clinton's Telecommunications Act - giving away the airwaves) with
entertainers, not newscasters, giving their fluff and nutter reports of
the day: OJ, Paris Hilton, pit bulls, Rosie O'Donnel, the runaway bride,
the diapered astronaut, etc. PR hirelings will be presented as 'experts'
be they mothballed generals or think tank suits. Citizens will be instructed
what to think - not how to think. Limits will be put on speech, in public
hearings, local council meetings/gatherings, letters to the editor, etc.
Facilitators, stakeholders, and consensus will take the place of the democratic
process (the outcome pre-determined).

ECONOMY - Trade agreements, unread (some are hundreds
of pages) and not debated will be voted on with the results being massive
unemployment, bankrupt farms, imported suspect food stuffs/products, echoing
steel mills, foreclosures, homelessness, etc. Language in these various
'agreements' will take precedence over all local zoning laws and environmental
protections. Elected representatives, (federal/state) will find these agreements
almost impossible to understand with their legalese and loophole language.

PRIVATIZATION - I would give away the Commons to private
industry and foreign investors including water, medical care, the infrastructure,
roads, schools, utilities, bridges, rivers, waste disposal, and lands (under
the guise of nature preserves, parks, heritage sites, biospheres and buffer
zones, etc). As collateral for the trillions in debt, I would post the
people's land with countless signs reading "Keep Out" and "No
Trespassing" and "Private" etc.

I would keep the multitudes entertained (distracted)
throughout the years with ball games, gladiator (well-paid) sports, concerts,
theme parks, shopping malls, expensive automobiles, theater, the arts,
movies, various awards ceremonies, electioneering debates (senseless),
arguments on war (to surge or not to surge, to invade or not to invade),
liposuction, breast implants, Viagra readiness, exotic vacations, designer
clothes, the newest must-have electronic gadgetry,

Meantime, I would see to it that government agencies
were slowly and inclemently dismanteled with the work farmed out to private
contractors. Positions of authority and decision-making will have corporate
interests appointed to them. Food protections, health, and safety, and
environmental regulations, will be under-funded or disregarded - favoring
corporate interest (profits) instead. Federal and state environmental agencies
will be mere rubber stamp mouth pieces for industry, paying no heed to
polluters or to the protection of various community health issues (SuperFund
sites).

All of this and more, I would do, if I were given permission
(generously-compensated, of course) to destroy a nation. I would make sure
that all of these various entities, and non-governmental agencies, were
compartmentalized (thinking they were about the people's business) with
no one (even within these agencies) having a clue as to the final objective.
It is comparable to the worker in the eastern European factory thinking
he is building baby carriages. Stealing a piece a week (he couldn't afford
to buy one) for his expected child. He finally has them all and assembless
it on the living room floor. To his surprise, he sees an M-16 in his hands.

The greatest conspiracies aren't hidden - just fragmented
into different pieces - like a puzzle. Right before people's eyes.

Whistle blowers, of course, will be dutifully dealt with
making an example for others. Most of the masses - worried about their
jobs, promotions, benefits and pensions - will 'follow orders.' The
few who object and fail to conform to the dictated, carefully constructed
'norm' will be labeled 'conspirators, crazies, fringe extremists, communists,
queers, un-American and traitors', etc. This has always worked down through
the centuries - it's the old herd instinct. Identified as 'other' has those
protesting or objecting marked as 'other' and therefore blackballed, to
be avoided and shunned. Nobody wants to be labeled 'other' - not in group-think.
That would make him or her much like the mad cow discovered in a dairy
herd - a turd in the punchbowl of society.